Ron Amey ’74
It’s a cold Christmas morning in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Ron Amey ’74 is helping his mother put the finishing touches on a roasted turkey with all the trimmings.
Amey places a teaspoon of sulfur over an alcohol burner lamp included in the Gilbert chemistry set he opened that morning.
A colorless, suffocating gas overpowers the delicious holiday aromas, and for half an hour the family stands outside in the frigid fresh air with the kitchen windows flung open.
Despite the disruption and annoyed parents, Amey is completely hooked and soon reigns supreme over a chemistry lab in the basement.
That lab sparked projects and experiments that led him to win regional, national, and international science fairs and earn rewards including a National Merit scholarship, a published paper, and trips to the Apollo 13 launch and Tokyo, Japan.
He came to South Mountain as a commuter student. Ned Heindel, Howard S. Bunn Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, led a strong group of graduate and postdoctoral fellows who befriended Amey and supported his undergraduate research. It didn’t take long for him to realize that he’d need a doctorate to pursue the kind of research that interested him.
Amey’s second publication emerged from his summer research work conducted under Heindel’s direction. Beyond the classroom and lab, Amey took on many projects for the department, like indexing the chemicals in the hallway cabinets in Chandler Hall and cleaning out the attic, where faculty members brought back specimens from early global expeditions.
He earned the William H. Chandler Chemistry Prize in 1974 and graduated with highest honors and departmental honors.
Amey received his doctorate and met his lifelong love, Gail, at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Soon, they were both employed at DuPont, where Amey built a career in new business development, turning waste products, by-products, and co-products into useful and marketable products.
The team joked how they worked from A to Z, developing additives for asphalt and zeolite catalysts for fuel. Amey developed materials for paints, coatings, epoxy, and fragrances. During his time at DuPont, he received two Corporate Marketing Excellence awards.
While his work often took him around the world, the Ameys love an adventure. Together, they have visited 53 countries, toured Africa 12 times, and explored sites including the Egyptian pyramids, Machu Picchu, and Angkor Wat.
The Ameys always travel with cameras to capture images of wildlife, architecture, landscapes, and culture.
Amey also is active at Lehigh, serving on the dean’s advisory council for the College of Arts and Sciences. The Ameys created an endowment supporting summer undergraduate chemistry research — something of lasting impact.
“Lectures and labs are necessary and helpful, but research is the only way to discover what students really want to pursue,” he says.
The Ameys use their IRA to make a qualified charitable distribution supporting that endowment. They also set up a donor-advised fund that they continue to grow and will utilize to benefit Lehigh as a beneficiary in the future.
“I received merit and financial aid scholarships as a student,” he says. “We want to support students so they don’t have to struggle to get what they need. No one can do it alone. There is so much talent in need of resources. We want to be there to help them ignite their passions and forge a pathway forward.”
Same fire he had, but less sulfur this time.
